Affiliate Marketing: Sell Other Peoples’ Products.
If you’re interested in making money online, you’ve probably already read about different money making models. Coaching, selling software/apps, running ads—there’s no shortage of ways to earn a living on the internet.
Affiliate marketing amongst all is one business model that gets particular attention, especially from first-time business owners.
Although being a subject of long-time controversy, it keeps attracting more and more prospective business owners.
What controversy, you might ask?
On the one hand:
There are those who, year after year, proclaim that affiliate marketing is dead. According to them, it is impossible to make a living as an affiliate marketer.
On the other hand:
Some people contradict them by pointing at the stats. Each year, total affiliate marketing spending rises by over a billion dollars. With that kind of money being thrown around, how could affiliate marketing possibly be dead?
The answer is simple—it isn’t. Affiliate marketing is actually growing, but it is often misunderstood. It is true that most new affiliates give up eventually, but this is due to factors other than the lack of money to go around.
To get you started on your way to learning about affiliate marketing, we will explain it in layman’s terms.
There are four roles in affiliate marketing: the advertiser, the affiliate, the affiliate network, and the customer.
Imagine owning a company. You need to sell products, so you would like to attract customers. That puts you in the role of advertiser. However, with a standard marketing campaign, you risk losing money.
You don’t want to do this, so you come up with a clever plan. You hire someone to promote the product for you. And Prospects will buy that product or
Everybody stands to benefit. The affiliate has an online presence; the advertiser has a product to sell. If the campaign succeeds, both profit. If it fails, nobody suffers any losses.
Similar arrangements have existed long before the internet, of course. Now online marketing got more adancded its more asy to do now for both companies and affiliates to reach enormous audiences.
In case you’ve been wondering about the affiliate network’s role, it is simply to bring affiliates and companies together. If you’d like to become an affiliate, one of the first steps is to join an affiliate program.
Some retailers and marketplaces like Amazon or eBay have their own affiliate programs. There are other networks that let you choose from a variety of products across a variety of companies. Each has its own benefits and drawbacks.
If we’re to give you one tip for success in the affiliate marketing world, it’s to be persistent. The naysayers we’ve mentioned are usually ex-affiliates who have given up.
It’s easy to see the current top affiliates and be discouraged if you don’t immediately reach the same level of success. It’s important to remember that they also had to work hard before they started earning those six- and seven-figure sums.
Like all good things, success in affiliate marketing takes time.
If you’d like to learn more about affiliate marketing, we also have an exciting infographic that analyzes the topic just below.